--- title: "Sermons, Collations and Tractates" author: "Meister Eckhart" translator: "C. de B. Evans" languages: [en] shelf: "Mystics" section: 30 of 132 url: https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/30/ cite: "Meister Eckhart, tr. C. de B. Evans, Sermons, Collations and Tractates, section 30. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/30/" --- # Sermons, Collations and Tractates *Meister Eckhart, tr. C. de B. Evans* A hundred and four sermons, the tractates and the Sayings, in Evans's 1924 English of Pfeiffer's German. ## 30. Sermon 30 · Vision is the Whole Reward Source: https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/30/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/30/#p-N [¶0] Beatus es, Simon Bariona, quia caro et sanguis non revelavit tibi sed pater meus, qui in coelis est {Matt, I617). ‘ Blessed art thou, [¶1] Simon Peter,’ says our Lord, ‘ for flesh and blood have not revealed it to thee, but my Father which is in heaven.’ St Peter has four names : Peter and Barjona and Simon and Cephas. Our Lord says, ‘ Blessed (or happy) art thou.’ Everyone desires happiness. As the philosopher hath it. All men desire to be. Hence St Augustine’s dictum, The good man wants no praise, he wants to be praiseworthy. And our own doctors teach withal that virtue is so pure, so wholly abstract and detached from corporal things in the ground and summit of its nature that nothing whatever can occur therein without defiling virtue and introducing vice. The least thought or suggestion of self-seeking and it is not virtue : it is turned to vice. Such is virtue by nature. [¶2] A heathen philosopher says, Virtue, except for virtue’s sake, is in uo wise a virtue. If its object is 'praise or aught else, that is. [¶3] bartering virtue. Genuine virtuJs not to be sold for anything on earth. Wherefore the good man seeks no praise : he seeks to be praiseworthy. It is not the chiding that we ought to mind but the fact of deserving to be chidden. [¶4] What must a man be to see God ? He must be dead. ‘ No man can see me and live,’ said our Lord. Now St Gregory says, ‘ That man is dead who is dead to the world.’ Ye can judge for yourselves how dead one may be and how little can touch us the things of this world. By dying to this world we do not die to God. St Augustine prayed a variety of prayers. ‘ Grant me, Lord,’ he said, ‘ to know both thee and me.’ ‘ O Lord, have mercy upon me and show me thy face and grant me that I die not until I eternally behold thee.’ This is the first point ; one must be dead to see God. So much for the first name, Peter. [¶5] One philosopher says, were there no means we should sec the beloved in heaven. But another one says, were there no means we should see nothing. Both of them are right. The colour on the wall which is carried to my eye is filtered and refined in the air and in the light and transmitted in a pure state to my eye. Even so the soul must be strained by light and grace before it can see God. So rather is that master right who said that without means we should not see at all. But the other one is also right who said that without means we should see the beloved in heaven. For the soul would see God naked if there were nothing between. [¶6] The second name, Barjona, signifies a son of grace, in whom the soul, clarified and sublimed, is meet for the vision of God. [¶7] The third name is Simon. That is to say, one who listens, one who obeys. To hear God one must be divorced from the world. David says, ‘ I will be still and listen to what God is saying in me.’ He pronounces peace in his Word, on his saints, on his people, on all such as commune with their heart. Happy the man who is busy attending to what God is saying in him. He is directly subject to the divine light-ray. The soul that stands with all her powers under the light of God is fired and inflamed with divine love. The divine light shines straight in from above, and a perpendicular sun on one’s head is a thing that few can survive. Yet the highest power of the soul, her head, is held erect beneath this shaft of godly light so that there can shine in this light divine which I have oft described as being so bright, so overwhelming, so transcendent, that all lights are but darkness in comparison with this light. All creatures, as so being, are as naught ; dowsed in the light wherein they get their being they are aught. IIow noble soever the natural mind yet to reach, to grasp God without means the soul must possess these six qTialifications I speak of. [¶8] First, she is dead to changing things. Next, she is well clarified in light and grace. Thirdly, she is without means. Fourthly, she hears God’s Word in her heart. Fifth, she is under the divine light. The sixth is the heathen philosopher’s definition of happiness : one perpetual ascension and vision of beatitude in God. Where the Son himself is understanding, in his first leaping forth, there in God’s highest we too shall understand. Wherefore it behoves us to keep our head turned steadfastly that way. [¶9] Cephas means a head. Understanding is the head of the soul. The superficial notion is that love stands first. Rut the soundest arguments expressly state (what is the truth) that the kernel of eternal life lies rather in knowledge than in love. This mark, for our best masters say, will no special thing, and lo ! intellect, understanding, this flics straight up to God. Love turns to the loved : she finds there what is good. Intellect seizes the cause of the good. Honey is sweeter in itself than anything we make from it. Love takes God as being sweet, but intellect goes deeper and conceives God as being. ‘ Blessed art thou, Simon Peter,’ quoth our Lord. To the righteous man God gives divine being, and calls him by the name which is appropriate to that being. Thus he goes on to speak of ‘ my Father which is in heaven.’ Among names none is more appropriate than He-who-is. That one should recognise a thing and simply say, it is, would seem absurd ; call it a stone, a bit of wood, and we know what that means. But suppose everything detached, abstracted, pared away, and nothing left except the is ; that is the characteristic nature of his name. Our Lord promised his disciples, ‘ My followers shall sit at my table in my Father’s kingdom, and shall eat my meat and drink my drink which my Father hath prepared for me.’ Happy is the wight who has attained to receiving with the Son just where the Son receives. Right there we too shall find our happiness, and there in his felicity, there where he has his being, in that same ground his friends shall all behold and thence shall draw their happiness. That is the table in God’s kingdom. May We approach that table. So help us God. Amen.